Monday, November 3, 2008

Veterans Park & Veterans Day

Yes, I realize you want my daily swimming report. Yes, I went swimming this morning about 7am, swam for about an hour. The water was warmer than yesterday.

I had to go visit Washington Mutual today. I decided to go to the one by Veterans Park in Arlington, due to thinking I'd like to take a nice hike there. And so I did.The Veterans Memorial at Veterans Park isn't finished yet. As you can see in the first photo it was being feverishly worked on today by a large group. I suspect they may be getting it ready for some sort of dedication ceremony next Tuesday, that being Veterans Day.

Fall has fallen hard at Veterans Park, just like it has everywhere. But, flowers are still blooming. One of the cool parts of Veterans Park is a Wildscape garden called a Xeriscape. Or a Xeriscape garden called a Wildscape, I forget which way it goes. It's all plants native to Texas, hardy plants that don't need much water. It's a show garden to give people an example of what they could do in their own gardens. The Xeriscape/Wildscape is designed to survive on only 2 waterings a year during a drought.

This put me in mind of last summer in drippy, cold Tacoma where I was chastised several times for not watering enough. I knew from my own successful plant growing that my sister's plants were being drowned. Poor, sickly tomato. Made my heart ache to see the drowning torture those plants were put through.So, all these photos except for the first one and the last three are of the Texas Xeriscape. I pray my little sister reads this and stops with the watering madness. It's profoundly disturbing. Particularly where it rains a lot.

In the distance, in the photo above with a lot of trees, you can see the flags you saw in the first photo.The next photo is of the wildside of Veterans Park. Very steep hills. It can be treacherous due to the need to watch out for flying frisbees tossed by the disc golfers. Bizarre sport. Looks funner than normal golf though.The last photo was part of an area of chalk art scrawled on the paved trail. The one in the photo appears to be the Empire State Building with the message saying "I Love NY."